A Comparison of Queuing Models for Handover Strategies in Cellular Mobile Telecommunication Systems

Abstract

The expanding mobile market has boosted the significance of handover management techniques. As cell sizes tend to decrease, the influx of handovers on each cell increases; bringing handover management techniques into the limelight. Consequently, handovers become one of the crucial assessing factors for the performance evaluation of cellular mobile communication systems. In order to evaluate the performance of handover management techniques, two different queuing models were designed: first come first serve (FCFS) and signal strength priority (SSP) queues. In case of FCFS, the handovers are served in the sequence of their arrival, whereas in SSP they are served in accordance to their signal strength. Computer simulations were developed to analyze the behavior of the two models. In order to validate the results, Markov analytical models were designed and programmed. This paper presents an in-depth comparative study of the queuing models using different quality of service (QoS) parameters.